As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

by Zoulfa Katouh

He was always intuitive. Smart beyond his years. He always sensed when I was down, even if I didn’t say anything. His heart, as soft as a cloud, reached out to everyone around him.

I think of Damascus, of our capital and pride, where a few protests were quickly squashed under the boot of the government and people returned to their “normal” lives. If Damascus should ever fall from the dictatorship’s clutches, its grip would vanish from all of Syria. Damascus is the capital. Every decision made there has effects that ripple all over the country. She is their stronghold. Victories for our ancestors throughout history are embedded in her soil. But she belongs to the people who are laying down their lives to free her.

“I know we met yesterday. But I’d like to believe in an alternate universe, where this”—he gestures between us—“would have worked out spectacularly. If there’s anything you or she need, please tell me.”

No matter what happens, you remember that this world is more than the agony it contains. We can have happiness, Salama. Maybe it doesn’t come in a cookie-cutter format, but we will take the fragments and we will rebuild it.”

At this point, Salama, all you can hope for is survival. Not happiness.”

try desperately to gather at anything scientific to explain the act of falling in love. How long does it stay in the body incubating before I begin to show symptoms? Is it chronic or fleeting? Are the circumstances with the war a factor in speeding up the process? Will my heart even care that I’ll be parted from him within a month?

It’s clear he’s been forced to grow up so suddenly that he’s holding on to anything resembling the innocence he lost. Normally by thirteen he would have thrown away his Spider-Man backpack for video games and meeting his friends for a football match in one of the alleys. His emotional growth is a plant that people forgot to water, so it tries to capture any moisture it can.

Fate has his strings, but we’re the ones who twist them together with our actions. My belief in what’s meant to be doesn’t make me a passive player. No. I fight and fight and fight for my life.

“Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for saving lives,” he whispers, and my eyes sting with tears. I’ve had people thank me before, but it’s always when terror was running high, and I’ve never had the capacity to absorb their words. No one’s ever said it to me during the quiet moments. No one who knows the horrors I go through, the fight I put up every single day, has truly seen me and said those words.

“I’ve thought so much about the time stolen from us,” he whispers, and I nearly sigh. His voice is so close. “If things weren’t like they are, we’d be long married. I would take you all over Syria on a road trip. We’d visit every city and village. See the history that lives in our country. I’d kiss you on the beaches of Latakia, pick flowers for you in Deir ez-Zour, take you to my family home in Hama, have a picnic under the ruins of Palmyra. People would look at us and they’d think how they’ve never seen two people more in love.”

“Bury me before I bury you,” he whispers in prayer. “Please.”

I know this moment of happiness will trickle by like sand in an hourglass, but I want to make each second count. I want to keep the pain at bay for a bit more.

Fear is a cruel thing. The way it distorts thoughts, transforming them from molehills into mountains.